Latest News

Mona Hammami, Director, Office of Strategic Affairs, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court, believes in brighter future despite rapid urbanization and humans racing to keep up

As Millennium Development Goals come to an end in 2015, nations globally have begun to envision the world in 2030 and the progress of development in the next 15 years. With growing population and the resulting urbanization, cities are seen emerging at a pace that has humans scrambling to keep up.

During the annual Salzburg Global June Board Meeting, People and Power: Will We Recognize the World in 2030, Mona Hammami, Director, Office of Strategic Affairs at Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court, was the guest speaker on the panel “Speed and the City: Can Humans Keep Up?”

Mona Hammami believes that speed is the key word when discussing the growing urbanization and the pace of change globally will determine the impact on the cities. Population is an important factor to consider because a large part of it in future will come from regions that do not see optimal development.

According to her, rising middle class and increase in income have more people moving to the cities and by 2050 almost two third of the global population will be urban.

“We are seeing a rise of cities but they are being very crowded. Particularly in emerging markets. This puts a lot of pressure on rise of slums and the potential use of resources. Twelve of the thirteen mega cities will be coming from emerging markets and although the mega cities are big, they are only contributing ten percent to the global growth.”

More than mega cities, it is the middle weight cities (population 1.50 million - 10 million) that Hammami believes will be the important ones. Almost 600 of these largest cities will contribute 60% to the global economic growth. Yet, they all will be facing the similar problems of infrastructure, finding funding for the same, and lack of resources and investment.

"In Brazil, for e.g, there is stagnation of growth because of lack of infrastructure which is conducive to development. Part of that is driven by the fact that budgetary cuts will automatically come to capital spending and will go to current expenditure on the social welfare. These are some of the dynamics most of these economies are facing. Limited funding, different dynamics, limited natural resources, lack of water, lack of sanitation etc. It is a very challenging situation to deal with.”

In China, Hammami says, there is an initiative to plan cities on the anticipation of the influx of the population but it has not necessarily been successful as there has not been great demand in terms of movement to these places.

She does, however, talk about futuristic planning of cities in countries like Singapore and other smaller countries and the problems these projects face based on politics cycles and the flawed policy making.

Hammami believes there are aspects of social development as well that are directly impacted by the growth of cities. There are different trends in education and healthcare emerging because of higher urbanization.

“In parts of emerging markets in developing countries we are finding zoonotic diseases developing partly because of urbanization, where parts of agricultural and forest land are being used and there is a mix of humans and animals. There is also rise of non-communicable diseases everywhere.”

She also discusses how change in social structures is having direct implications on cities. Policy makers are now being forced to think about growth not just in terms of GDP but also the happiness of people.

Despite the rising problems with the increase in urbanization and more people moving to cities, Hammami asserts, “it is not completely a gloomy picture.”

Technology, she says, will play an important role in bringing a change to this gloomy picture. One of the strategies that governments can employ is to discourage people from moving towards cities by developing jobs and better health care in rural areas through mobile technology.

It can also help in building more sustainable and smarter cities especially from the prospect of saving and protecting the environment. Use of technology to set up renewable sources of energy is one such example.

“I am leaning towards a better future, where we will have much better connectivity at city levels. Creation of cities with new possibilities for employment. I do see technological revolution actually contributing a lot more than we thought and at a much cheaper price.”

“I do see a positive story out of all this. What I wanted to do was paint a gloomy picture as we have it right now, but I think future is much more promising.”